


The Sweetest Thing

by AGreatUnkindness



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28917102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGreatUnkindness/pseuds/AGreatUnkindness
Summary: Someone learns a little bit about their own mortality while learning more about herbology. One-off piece featuring OCs and chapters that wouldn't fit into a longer piece.





	1. Chapter 1

The kiwquats had passed ripening and went straight to rot. She thought of her father in moments like this. He had been an herbologist, her grandfathers on both sides had been herbologists and her mother a chef. Cosima had insisted, at a certain age, that she hated both cooking and growing things. She hated cooking less now but had a little talent for it and she looked around her shop taking in all the colors of all of the plants, both magical and not, from every continent on earth and sighed. Her father would have raised his eyebrows and said nothing but he was long gone now so he couldn't say anything even if he had wanted to, even if his expression would have said it all: "told you so". He hadn't lived to see her fall in love with their families legacy and tradition. "Jokes on you, old man," she thought.

The door on the bell chimed and a young, tired looking man walked in. He looked around and looked surprised as his eyes fell on the 'hot chicken' leaves. She didn't have to follow his sight line to know what it was. Everyone loved the sight of them, especially this time of year. They glowed a soft, shifting orange and red and bronze. The young man went up to the plant to touch a leaf and remembered his manners. "May I?" he asked after finding her at the back of the shop behind a little shelf. He looked younger now for his curiosity. She nodded. He got close enough to reach out and touch the leaves and burst into a delighted laugh. "So it's true!". Cosima smiled, "Take a leaf." The young man reached again for the third time and held his hands up to the glow and smiled even brighter. He plucked a leaf and held it broad side in between his palms to warm them. He brought the leaf up to his nose to smell a roast chicken smell.

He gazed around some more as he made his way up to the counter. He would spend many more hours there taking samples and small cuttings from himself, which she allowed because he was not her usual customer. Younger for one. Young people here had no interest in plants. "Nor anywhere else", a voice in her head grunted. It was familiar and she couldn't have told you why but, she had a feeling that the sound had an accent and that accent was Sicilian. He looked as if he did not have much money but wizards in England? Maybe that wasn't so odd but her clientele did have something else, an air. A cold, root splitting air about them and he did not have that. True her goods and plants were expensive. The average wizard would not be able to afford most of what grew here but at least more interest from more people might have made her happier. She could feel her father cross his arms, smile and shrug in her mind.

The young, old man continued to look around. "I didn't know this was here.," he called over his shoulder still mesmerized by the plants. True, this shop was at the very, very, very end of Tangenti Alley. It had once been something like a green grocers but there were many more places to buy food in Dagon. The only reason she still had any business at all was due in large part to the foreigners who had moved in. The entire alley way was cheaper to set up shop there, no old brands or shops and where a lot of sort of shady dealings and counterfeit goods used to be sold but slowly people who wanted a little more money came in to sell their little (legitimate) goods and then buying stalls and then building shops and there it was.

Cosima had not been there for all of it. She originally arrived in England to work for the International Confederation of Wizards Quidditch Committee and it was after maybe ten years she realized she did not want to work in Quidditch and that watching it would be just fine. She got into the habit of taking long walks after work. She walked the area around her own home dreary and cheerless as it was. She walked the coast which was just freezing salty air unlike the sun-drenched hot salty air coast of her childhood. She walked all the way through every alley and store she could find and just think and feel sorry for herself and she had almost missed this little shop before the alleyway's cobblestones broke up and the end of the alleyway turned into a steep tall hill. Nestled, squished in between another shop and that hill was this place. She had opened the door and it felt like home. That day she found what looked like an orange the size of her head and recognized it immediately, she bought one for herself and at home after eating dinner took a large serrated bread knife and cut the fruit in half and revealed the citrus cake like sponge underneath a yielding rind. After all this time in England, after all of her boredom, she had finally found home where she was. She cut another quarter and warmed it in the oven. Cosima ate the pane al miele with tea.

The young man walked up to the counter. "Do you know what a mango is?", he asked.

Cosima visited the shop often after that, asked where and how they got the fruit and vegetables and roots in. Soon she was helping them source some of it and fill out the parchment to get approval for more plant imports. Not much longer after that she juggled her job at the Confederation and the grocers and when she was too tired to do both and had to drop one? She wasn't doing her job as well at the Confederation… she had to make a choice so she waffled as was her way.

This is why she kept her prices high. Looks could be so deceiving. The young man did not have any special spell to know what Cosima's face dropping into pinched mouth glare meant.

He tried to elaborate. "I've never heard of one and many people haven't. I'm trying to find where I can get some."

At the time, this was a true statement. It was fall in England. She forgot there was a time when just the fruit grown from the seeds and cuttings of her neighbors, even the non-magical ones, shocked other people's sensibilities. There were classes of fruit and vegetable that people didn't even know how to eat until you woke up one day and they just knew. There would be a time when all this strange vegetation, smuggled into the country, forgotten at the bottom of a suitcase, carried with love and hope that they would grow in a new place would seem indigenous to a place. An entire generation would scoff at the idea that, what was now a common food, could ever have been foreign, let alone uneaten at all. Cosima softened again and sighed. She didn't have mangos but she pointed out where he might find someone who could get them.

Business was doing well in no small part to Cosima's organization and care and soon after the last thing sold out for the third time in two years she asked why the shop owners didn't just grow some of it themselves. The shopkeeper handed her a bag of dirt the next day and a bag of fruit and a root nub. Everything she planted died or didn't grow at all except for one. A little shoot poked out almost half a year later when she had thought everything had died and then that day she put in her letter of resignation with the Confederation.

She took over the shop as manager when the original shop owner got older. After the shop owner died, she fought to keep the store open when his heirs wanted to close it down. They came to an agreement where she would buy it out instead and even before they could get a barrister to mediate the sale, one of those same heirs , sensing how serious she was simply handed her the paperwork and title insisting that she could have the headache if she wanted it that bad. The remaining heirs fought that heir for the lost money and there were many more deaths in that family of people who weren't as old as the original shopkeeper but Cosima knew nothing of it as the matter had been settled, at her own insistence, for the cost of some of her savings (250 galleons which was a king's ransom back then) and a little tree the heir had some affection for. For all the business the old shopkeeper had done that Cosima had witnessed him do, he was not very good with money (a trait her had, unfortunately, passed on) and while she could have kept the shop as a grocers, it only lasted as long as it took for her to get a green thumb and then green hands and it spread all the way up her arms to her shoulders and then it made more sense to have a plant shop with a small selection of goodies and in season veg.

The young man left smiling after looking around. He lifted the leaf, in a gesture of gratitude as the door shut behind him. Now what to do about the kiwquats. Her own hybrid. They were a combination of kiwis and loquats. She stood at the wooden counter thinking and knew she would think better with her hands in the dirt. She went to a little corner where a big mound of sweet, green smelling earth sat grabbed a handful of ash nearby and an armful of dirt and mixed them into a new pile where she let her mind wander about the hybrids.

She can't remember who it was or how it was but the store had been written up somewhere and then the business had really done something special. She was set forever. She could do whatever she wanted now which she didn't realize is what she had wanted to do all along. The store no longer had to make money. She no longer had to try. She could sell the shop and sit and watch Quidditch all day! That was silly passing thought. She could bring a radio in for Quidditch and then what? Her customers sometimes asked for rare species. She could try to hybridize magical plants and maybe, surely, radicalized many more. And so she did. She had nothing better to do.

"How much?", a customer would demand and then hand her even more money. Her clientele changed as the prices went up because some of her clients refused to pay for less than the best and the best cost. Cosima kept the prices high and lost the old customers and fewer of her neighbors came in, not because of her, but her clients. And those clients insisted Cosima set-up shop in Diagon Alley, where it was "more convenient" and "less out of the way?", always said with an upswing in the voice, a raised eyebrow and a presumed understanding. The prices and few customers were enough to sustain the original shop but not the one in Diagon Alley with its enormous rent. Cosima would either give up her dream of loafing or close one shop down and she closed down the second because it was easier and had a lease where the first one she owned outright so it closed and she was back here but the customers didn't show up like they used to as used to the other location as they had become so she increased the prices even more and what do you know some of the newer, old clients came back by "appointment only, please. I'd like to enjoy my shopping experience without bother. You understand, right?", they wiped their hands on kerchiefs from the outside their house elves in tow. A lot of the money she had made was now gone. The second shop had been a bad idea and she would have to work to maintain. in Cosima's frustration and impatience in trying to keep her once thriving business steady, she found that she could openly roll her eyes at those very same clients and that some even preferred to be treated curtly and pay a premium for it but she missed the liveliness of the old shop, the chaos and the newness and sometimes even giving away something for free. That she enjoyed. She enjoyed when someone let themselves enjoy something and the young man had been grateful and awed with a little leaf. The other clients were too cold, they knew most of the inventory. Even if something wasn't worth the price she could charge whatever she wanted and the clients would pay and that was predictable and boring for them to act like they knew what a plant was when they didn't and this boy had asked her about a mango? She had had to tell him.

The shop felt lonely and quiet that evening as she worked on her new hybrid and she thought of her parents and how she had made it all the way to this place. She remembered how she got there and then thought that maybe she needed to try to work at the Confederation again. It was time for a new adventure or maybe even an old one.


	2. Chapter 2

That day Lupin found out that mangos were not in season, that they had been radicalized fruit species. He learned that 'radicalized' was the word used for when an entire plant species is no longer possessed magical attributes. He learned that kiwis and loquats had also been radicalized and that the shop owner, whose name he learned was Cosima was trying to produce a magical hybrid which sometimes happened if you got lucky and then hoped that they would produce viable seeds that would grow into magical plants one more time where one could harvest the seeds and have magical fruit again.

"How long would that take?", Lupin asked.  
"It's generally theorized to take the sum of the fruiting years times two so thirty-two years for g1, the first generation. We would find out in g2 if it has worked." Lupin felt stunned.  
"So how long till you know?", Lupin asked.  
"Maybe, one hundred and forty-two years." Cosima looked good for her age but was still not what someone would call young but Lupin didn't say anything. Lupin looked at Cosima. Cosima looked back.  
Lupin learned that, according to Cosima and though herbologist the world over tried everyday in hybridizing hundreds of species over generations, there was no word that she could think of in Italian or English, for what Cosima was trying to do.

There were other things he learned that day though he would not live long enough to fully understand the depth of them, he would forget the lesson as he learned it but remember the feeling and the pinch of it even as he couldn't place why it bothered him so much. He knew, even then, that he had learned something profound, important and useful. He learned the importance of doing something for a time when you won't be alive to witness if your effort was worth it or not. He had asked the woman if it had ever been done and she had laughed. And then he asked if she thought she would or could be the one to do it and she pinched her mouth again. Lupin didn't know what her father or mother looked like but she looked like him or her in that moment.

"Why would I bother if I didn't think it could be done? Why would I bother if I didn't think I might be the one to do it?"

Lupin left the shop with the leaf that smelled like roast chicken though the smell was already starting to fade, the leaf had cooled down to the temperature of a normal plucked leaf. He had grown up in England, he enjoyed the noise of London and he had visited Diagon Alley countless times, he had visited Knockturn Alley the first time on a dare and the second time with the marauders, all of whom were impressed that he had been there once alone. He had never been here in all his life. He passed by the cramped long winding path he had taken to get there. He heard a little French, a little of another language and a song in yet another language float through the air. A group of wizards lounging at cafe tables popped crunchy, dark green okra snails into their mouths chatting casually in between bites. He would pick up a marshmallow egg on Cosima's suggestion from the shop across the street from the cafe. When Lupin asked which animal laid those, she sighed deeply, replying flatly that it was a fruit. At the same shop he would also buy some garlic supremes and a crisping squash on Dorcas' suggestion. She being the one who suggest he look for mangos in that part of town anyway. If any place had mangos, it would be there. It had taken him all day to get to Cosima's shop. He imagined he would get there in the morning and be back, triumphant, within a few hours. Well, he had arrived very early in the morning and became distracted at every turn. It was early enough that people were still setting up their shops and greeting each other and the new day. He smelled coffee and tea and cigarette smoke. Witches and wizards were wrapped up in cloaks and shawls, rubbing their hands for warmth and laughing with one another against the cold of the morning and he started to ask around for the mangos that no one knew about in muggle shops. He was pointed around and thankful for it. He went in stalls and stores with a good and ready excuse and wandered around. He made a detour into an international bookstore and clenched his fists against the urge to spend his mango money on a few books and parchment sheaf of spells in other languages, apparently compiled the shop itself and self-destructing. He would come back for Magic Meals in Minutes written by Amoy Winstead. The cover was bright and frilly and a moving illustration of a witch smiled cheerily from the cover as she held up a tray of what appeared to be dancing cabbages. He would return to that shop later to buy that book and another book called La Historia Dulce de la Herbología written by Miguel Ramos (his second best-seller!) and translated by Rosa Cherrington. The book featured recipes using difficult techniques or hard to find ingredients. Both would be gifts for Philippa. The day warmed and wore on and he finally arrived at Cosima's shop. When he left with suggestions and a name for someone she was reasonably sure could get him some of these fruit, he vowed to visit Tangeti Alley again. And he did several more times until the end of the war. Tangenti Alley, like so many pockets of non-English wizards was targeted. Like so many places where there was any suspicion that there might be a muggle-born or intermagical family might exist had to go. Even as many people in that very place were from even older, pure blood families wherever they had come from. They were the ones with the money or the influence or brought-up with the nerve to try in London. After the war, a group of death eaters turned the spell to get into Tangenti Alley over on itself and made the dirt underfoot literally boil. The entire path that Lupin walked that day and days after was razed. The ground steamed and hissed, spitting up clods of cobblestones that flew through windows. The shops sank into the hot, furious ground, consumed by the hungry earth. Thankfully, very few people were harmed but all the same. Tangenti Alley never really recovered.

In the morning, Lupin had walked past a rounded off building that bowed into the middle of the already slim alleyway. When he had arrived, he past a tall glittering structure of what appeared to be fabric woven out of cobwebs sparkling with the dew of the morning. Now when he walked past it was a soft gray, lightly transparent, smoothness and the walls seemed to shift in the breeze and movement made by people walking past not paying it any attention as they didn't pay much attention to something they couldn't see or, more likely, something they passed everyday, something they were familiar with. On his way out of the shop, he brought it up as the witch at the till placed the marshmallow eggs in a little tray.

"The South African witches live there I think. I think it's called an ingomar."

Lupin asked how he could go in or if he could even go in.

"Probably not. One two five galleons, thirteen pounds or one hundred forty-eight lira." She said rapid fire. Fluently.

He wanted to try one of the eggs now but didn't, it would be better to share. He instead stared at the ingomar and noticed that there didn't even seem to be a door or an opening to get in. Part of him wanted to touch the material. Maybe it was like getting on the platform. Maybe one had to run through it but he had a job to do. And so he thought maybe, by the next time he visited he would have worked up the nerve to try to go inside or could find something in a book that would explicitly warn him not to.

He left the alley through the way he had gone in. He got to the end of the alley where there was a hole in the ground that led to a dark stairway. He knew in his mind that he was going down a flight of stairs but midway, he felt like he might in fact be climbing a set of stairs but he couldn't explain why. His ears popped and he knew instinctually that he was underground but underground of where he was unsure. And just like that he was back but with the sunsetting on one end of Diagon Alley. He made his way back through the Leaky Cauldron and decided to walk as far as he could in the chill of a short autumn's day to think about everything he'd seen. He wouldn't have to ask to spend the night, he and Philippa would stay up the entire time dissecting everything he'd discovered (except of course, the books he meant to give her as gifts). He would have to take a bus eventually, it was just faster but slower still than disapparating. He hopped on the bus and remembered he didn't have muggle money. Lupin walked the remainder of the way and arrived late but with a bag of mangos, a fruit he had never heard of, that he hadn't known existed a few days ago.


End file.
